Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER TWELVE ▪▫▪▫▪
KIRA WAS NINE WHEN SHE MET her first pirate. Captain Bluebeard was his name, and he did not have a hint of blue anywhere near his face. Kira was covered in blood and sneaking out of a wagon that had so graciously and unknowingly given her a ride to a coastal village in West Ravka. Disoriented and in search of a means of escape, she stumbled upon the captain on the harbor.
Bluebeard was easily bought by the jewels she offered him—and how she nearly killed one of his men, who had tried to touch her golden hair. He snuck her into Queen's Lady ship, the ship off to Ketterdam, the ship whose captain was indebted to the pirate. Bluebeard had warned her a pirate ship wasn't a place for a young girl, and given her a way out of Ravka.
Out of Ravka. Because she wasn't supposed to go back.
She'd said so herself. Many times. She nearly didn't go on the job for the Sun Summoner. Kaz Brekker be damned if she stepped one booted foot of hers in Os Alta, she remembered thinking. And now... Now she was willingly returning to Ravka for the second time in a short time.
To save the bloody country nonetheless.
"I'd want to get out of Ravka too, little Bloody Gold," Bluebeard had told her. Bloody gold. That's what he'd call her, because of her golden locks and blood-stained shoulder.
Last she heard of him, Bluebeard had died at the hands of the Crimson Mirage, the phantom ship of the ocean. The one sailors saw before their ships were ransacked, the one that appeared at dawn and twilight to plunge them into misfortune.
Kira shook her head with a frown. She was returning to Ravka and instead of thinking of everything that could go wrong, instead of fearing the Fold that stretched out beyond them, Kira was thinking of phantom ships and old acquaintances. Then again, why should she be scared?
Death didn't scare her. Not anymore. Not when it had brushed her tears away. The Fold didn't scare her either. It rather irritated her in fact. Perhaps the Darkling's creatures were unsettling, products of merzost, unnatural abominations. Yet, the result of an encounter with them was either a great story to tell or death. The latter returned her to the fact she didn't fear it anymore—not when she knew dying didn't mean she would be forgotten, that there would be people mourning her (something she should've realized sooner if the mural in Novo-Kribirsk was anything to go by).
"I thought you'd be studying the sword with Jesper."
Kira's lips tugged up as Kaz settled beside her, leaning against the banister. She shrugged. "If I pick up that sword to study it, I would never return it to Ohval. And I hear she'd rather attached to it—poisons people and such when they try to reach it."
"She wasn't protecting the sword."
"I know." Kira glanced up at him. Kaz was looking ahead, but seemingly sensing her gaze on his face, he turned to look at her, his softening ever so slightly. "I'm going to help," she told him, "once we reach Ravka. I need to help my brother."
